til you cannot lie still
by Charis M
Summary: "They move in each other's orbits, succumb to gravity, crash together again and again ..." Snapshots of an end, and perhaps the glimmer of a beginning. [continuation of 'enough is not the same'; modern au, interlinked prompt ficlets]


**til you cannot lie still**

 _There's something awfully fun about getting prompts for an AU once it's going - and I've enjoyed the heck out of writing these. A combination of five-sentence ficlets and longer prompts, picking up (from my vague scratched-together timeline) a couple of years after the events of the preceding set of ficlets. I highly recommend reading those first if you want this to make sense. (For anyone curious: there is at least one more prompt to fill for this, and I have every intention of bringing it to some kind of coda.)_

 _Title once again via Poets of the Fall's "Carnival of Rust". Where the prompt has been used as a starter, the italicised line(s) at the start of each section is the prompt. Penultimate prompt from the ever-lovely Athena; all others anonymous._

* * *

 **1\. break**

 _"Your arrogance is so unbelievable. All you did was get me pregnant, but I'm married to somebody else now and have every intention of raising this child with them."_

It hadn't been meant - it's never been meant, but it seems to be their habit, that no matter how deep the anger between them runs they end up together, a tangled mess of shadowed corners and half-voiced words and regrets that follow hard on the heels of passion (and what is anger, if not passionate emotion?) - and if they had parted ways after without comment, it had been no different from the times before, and he'd thought little of it. He'd known (he tries not to, but he clings to every scrap of news of her that reaches him, no matter how deeply it may wound) even before he'd seen the sparkle of diamonds on her finger, known it meant he should keep his distance, but it hadn't helped, and here they are again, and she's leaning back against the door of Porthos' guest room with her hair falling out of the pins and her mouth red and bruised and her eyes cold and hard as she looks at him, and -

Only the slightest curve beneath flowered skirts betrays her state; if he hadn't been as close as skin moments before, he probably wouldn't have noticed, but even after the way they've bled and broken each other she's as familiar as breathing, and he'd known - and the hardness in her eyes makes him think she _wanted_ him to know, because this revelation and those words are the cruellest cut.

"I could tell him," he says, thinking of her husband, lean and monied and as hard-eyed as she has become, and of what a scandal it had been when the scion of such a family had married a nobody from the wrong side of the tracks.

It should make her flinch, should make her grimace, should make her react in some way other than the empty, triumphant smile she gives him in response, the naked challenge when she looks back at him and only answers, "Then do."

 **2\. drown**

 _"I'm here because Porthos said you had gotten into some trouble and you couldn't sort it yourself; I'm doing this for him - don't think anything of it."_

The words are as sharp as the edges of this woman he does and doesn't know, a woman whose bare toes are curled around the edge of the chair she's dragged to his bedside but whose forbidding expression belies any vulnerability tucked-up knees and the arms wrapped around them might otherwise suggest. Motherhood softens most women, but though it has blurred the slender curves of her body there is no gentleness in her, and he thinks suddenly, sadly, that surely it is a softness he stole when he pushed her away, a softness that has slipped from between his fingers with the years and barbs and friction and fights and unspoken emotions that tangle around them, as useless to her now as he is these days.

He gropes blindly for the bottle on the nightstand, unable to bear the recrimination in those all-too-familiar green eyes; she only watches impassively, silent judgement that weighs him and finds him wanting, and he wonders what the hell Porthos was thinking sending her of all people now when she's the reason he's in such a state to begin with - thinks perhaps it's only a dream, a hallucination brought on by too much wine, and slurs (or thinks he does; he's not sure he can form words when he's this far gone, so perhaps they're only in his mind), "Y'r not real."

Perhaps _she's_ only in his mind after all, with how she's looking at him now, her expression somewhere between pity and disgust as she pries the bottle out of his fingers and says (and there is that softness, almost grudging, and now he's convinced more than ever it's a dream, because the Anne who exists now no longer remembers how to be gentle where he is concerned), "Go to sleep, Athos."

The scent of forget-me-nots chases him down into slumber.

 **3\. freeze**

 _"I'm scared of being with you. You have …_ we _have hurt each other too much. When we were together I was afraid I would drown in you and when I lost you I did, but I've never forgotten how you look in the mornings. How your eyes shine. How you like to be touched in that certain place. Does he know where to touch you? I want you back, I want that life we let slip away. I want to be a father to my son."_

She tightens her fingers around the wrought-iron railing, welcoming the way the cold metal presses painfully into her palms, and fights the urge to turn to him. The words are bad enough (god damn her for a fool, because she still loves him far too much despite everything that's happened), but she can imagine all too clearly the emotions roiling in his eyes and keeps her own fixed on the night sky before her.

"Pretty words," her own manage to be sharp instead of soft, but only just, "but they don't solve anything."

A gusty exhalation; she feels, or imagines she can feel, the heat of his breath even with the space between them. "No," he agrees, grudgingly. For a long moment he's silent, and if she were less attuned to him (even now, even years later) she'd think he'd gone, but she knows him better than that and just waits for him to speak again. "Are you happy?" is all he finally says, in the end.

Such an innocuous question - and so heavy with implication. It's her turn to sigh, but more softly, watching her breath curl in the winter air, as she considers her next words. So easy to say yes but they'd both know it for a lie; she's under no illusions that he can read her well enough to discern that truth, even now. And yet no would be a lie in its own way, because she's not _un_ happy (at least not when he's not there to remind her of what was and of everything they had destroyed). And she loves her son, but even that happiness is shaded, complicated by the small ways in which he reminds her of his father, steeped in a grief for what might have been.

"I'm … content." It's not the right word either, but it's the best she can find. She won't give him any more of the truth than that, and if she gave him any less now he would surely recognise it. He's learned her too well in these intervening years, for all their distance.

She doesn't turn the question back around, because she already knows the answer - no matter how she tries not to, she always ends up keeping an ear open for news of him, and she's well aware he's clinging to the ledge with his nails, holding on to hard-won sobriety and trying to rebuild, and maybe that's why he's here now, forcing her to hear words that cut deep into her defences. It would be far more sensible to walk away, to go back inside, perhaps to find her husband and plead a headache and call it an early night, but she is too proud and too foolish to flee. (And to say she hasn't missed him, even like this, would be a lie.)

And she knows him, even now - knows him deep into the marrow, and it means she understands those words despite the contradiction in them, understands how he can admit fear and desire in the same breath and not find them in opposition (and how could she not when she faces the same conflict, because he makes her _feel_ no matter how cold she becomes, and though she's terrified the fire that still sparks between them will burn her to ash it doesn't stop her from wanting to reach for his warmth), but the knowing signifies nothing, must mean nothing, since even if she wanted (and god, she does and she doesn't and were they ever, _ever_ simple, or was that just another dream, another delusion she'd clung to when the truth had been too painful to face?) she has more than herself to think of.

She looks at him now, over her shoulder, unwilling to give him more of her than that. He's watching her just like she knew he would be, eyes fixed on her face, and there's something in his gaze, yearning tinged with a bitter edge, that reminds her of his family's penchant for addiction - because they'd been good once, before -

"You know you can't have those things," she says, low and acrid and showing more than she wants to of the wounds that fester beneath her skin. "Don't ask for what I can't - won't - give you. It only wastes both of our time."

His mouth tightens; it's his turn now to grip the railing with one hand, and she watches his knuckles turn white as they flex. They both need these anchors, or they'd reach, fall into each other, and that would be the most foolish end they could come to tonight, because as good as they'd been, it had never been _enough_. Both he and she have always been better at destruction, particularly when it comes to each other.

"He doesn't love you, Annie."

She knows. She's known from the beginning; her marriage is little more than a business arrangement, because she'd left sentimentality behind alongside her heart when she'd left him all those years ago. It was easier, in many ways, to come into it without illusions on either side. (And if she sometimes misses having more, she need only remind herself of arguments and recriminations and epithets hurled, of how much easier love makes it for others to hurt you. She is done with being vulnerable.) Her loveless marriage is safety and security and opportunity, and it is what she'd needed - what she still needs. His words can't change that.

Athos still loves her. She knows that just as surely, sees it in every part of him as he watches her. And she knows if she let him in his words would prove prescient, and so she just turns back to watching the city skyline, ignoring the heat of his gaze still intent on her. "I have no interest in drowning."

(He doesn't call her out on the lie.)

 **4\. thaw**

 _"I can't keep pretending I don't want you anymore."_

If the circumstances had been different, she would have said nothing - would have been able to silence the awful yearning that fills her at the sight of him as she has managed so many times before - but she's caught off guard, disarmed, soft in the wake of putting her son to bed and without her usual armour here in her brother's home, awash in memories and assailed by nostalgia. And when their eyes meet in the dimly-lit hallway, her hand falling away from the doorknob and him just coming up the stairs, it's as if they stand suspended in time, yesterday close enough to touch, and the words fall from her lips before she can stop them, before she even consciously thinks them.

And they're nothing but truth, no matter that she wishes she hadn't spoken them aloud: she can't, not when every time she sees him it chips away at the thorny shield of anger she's wrapped around her heart, bares a little more of the Annie who'd loved him, and it's beyond unfair that she cannot fully harden her heart against the man who'd ruined her life those years ago, but she not only still wants, she still _loves_ , and in her inability to excise him from that traitorous organ lies her weakness.

"Anne," he breathes, so quietly she can almost believe she imagines it, " _Annie_ -" and she should walk away, god, should bid him goodnight and turn and go into her own room, close the door again on all she was, but the words were true and even though she shouldn't she's _so damned tired_ , and he's looking at her like that, soft and sad and with a desperate wounded need that echoes her own, and it's so very hard to remember all the reasons why. This can do nothing but end badly, no matter what comes in this hazy dim dream-limned space, but when she finally manages to compel her frozen limbs into motion again she finds herself reaching for him instead.

 **5\. storm**

He knows it's a terrible idea to keep seeing her like this. He knows it in the same way that he knows Anne still holds his heart in her hands, no matter how many times he's tried to turn away - and the same way he knows that he doesn't want to, because to cut free would be to leave the best of himself behind, no matter that they seem only to bring out the worst in each other now. And no matter how the realisation hurts, no matter how he knows he shouldn't, he comes back. They move in each other's orbits, succumb to gravity, crash together again and again, and each time he is left wondering if he walks away more or less broken than he would have without giving in (wondering how much of him their encounters piece back together, even as they tear him asunder).

Insanity, he remembers reading somewhere, is repeating the same actions and expecting a different outcome. In her presence he can be nothing but mad, because all he wants to do is try and try and try and be damned the knowledge that nothing will change, because the sun still rises in the east and Anne is still married to another man and Athos will still never know his son, and he will still bleed on her sharp edges willingly if it means a moment more spent dreaming of what could (never) be.

And yet he knows that it cannot last. He tells himself that each and every time, and it never survives their next meeting, and he comes to see that the only solution to this is to avoid her entirely - and that the only way _that_ will happen is for one or the other of them to leave. He cannot ask it of her, when her family is here (nor would he; whatever else he may be, in this he is enough of a gentleman). Perhaps it will be for the best, after all. Perhaps a change will deliver the shock his mind so badly needs. He has too much history here, too much weight dragging him down, and even without her presence he does not think he could move on while living in this country. And so he sends his CV off, makes some calls, gets in touch with an old mentor, and before he knows it things have been arranged. He'll be flying out in a week.

He should tell her. He doesn't, in the end, but she finds out all the same (just like he knew she would, deep down) and storms into his flat on a rainy Thursday afternoon, dripping and furious. She pushes past him when he opens the door, strides through the islands of half-packed cardboard boxes strewn across the living room, whirls back to face him with fire snapping in her eyes and anger practically vibrating around her, and spits out, " _Coward_."

And he can't contest that, because who but a coward would run? But sometimes that's what it takes, and so he just looks at her, takes in the hectic colour staining her cheeks and the pain imperfectly masked, and turns away long enough to close the door. "Probably," he agrees. It's easy to make the single word neutral.

"Were you going to tell me, or were you going to have Porthos do your dirty work for you?" She makes it sound so much more sordid than accepting a job across the Atlantic should be.

"It would've been better if you hadn't found out." Better for whom, he doesn't know.

"Damn it, Athos!" She doesn't move, but the hands fisted at her sides tremble. "You owe me the courtesy of -"

"I owe you _nothing_!"

His outburst echoes in the sudden silence that follows, seems to reverberate off the bare walls. Anne stares at him, face pale and lips pressed together tightly, and there's so much hurt in her eyes that he wants to take the words back - and doesn't that just encapsulate them, endless regrets and actions they can never undo? But the words are said, and no less true for how they've cut. After all that's happened, neither of them owes the other anything, especially something so genteel as common courtesy.

Time seems to float, stretch forever and fly past, and he doesn't know how long it is they stand there looking at each other, searching for things they'll never find. It could be seconds or an eternity before the tension overtakes her, pushes her to sit down heavily on the edge of one of the boxes. "I never wanted to drive you away," she confesses. Her voice seems oddly small, unusually tentative.

"I know." He doesn't move - doesn't dare, because he wants to reach out and hold her and reassure her (reassure _himself_ ) that things will be alright, but that would be the act of a fool, and he needs to keep even this scant distance or he'll fall into her again. "But we can't go on like this, Annie. It's destroying us."

She knows; he can see that in the way her shoulders hunch, the way her fingers twist into her wool skirt, the way her eyes shutter. She knows, and he knows, and the knowing drags them together as surely as anything else. "I'm sorry."

"So am I. But being sorry doesn't solve anything."

"So you'll run?"

"What choice do I have?" He rakes a restless hand through his hair, forces the words out even as he bleeds anew. "We can't keep doing this - and we both know that's not going to change as long as I'm here."

"No," the agreement is a quiet murmur. She pushes to her feet, smooths out nonexistent wrinkles in her skirt; by the time she finally looks back up at him, she's pulled the shreds of her composure back together. "I should go."

He should let her go. But if this is to be the end of them - and it must be, god, it has to be or there will only be the destruction of them as individuals as well as collectively - then he can't yet. Not like this, not on a sour note, not with anger and bitterness and recrimination the last thing between them. It's not sensible, it's not _sane_ , but they've never been that, and tomorrow he will find the strength to walk away because he has a plane to catch, but now -

Now he wants to be a fool one last time. She has already left her indelible mark on him, branded his heart and woven into his soul, but that doesn't mean he can't want this last memory of her to carry with him. It would be easier if his last recollections were of divisive things, but that's not fair, that's not _true_ , and even in their lies there is a core of truth he is unwilling to change.

He wants one last time, as a farewell to what could have been, and he can see in her eyes that she's deciphered what he cannot put to words, because she stops before him. "This is a terrible idea," she says, but that's never been reason enough to stop either of them, and her hands are already reaching for his.

He twines his fingers through hers, lifts them to brush his mouth across her knuckles, breathes out, "Yes."

* * *

 _I didn't use the prompt text anywhere in the last section, but it was: "I guess happily ever after was never meant for us, but tonight it is just enough to have you near. Let me just hold you one last time. I don't remember a time that you did not own my heart. I have and will always love you. but there is no future left for us. We can't go down that road again. Every time I walk away from you I leave a piece of myself behind."_

 _Horribly amused that once again the prompts included a kid - I have no idea if baby prompts are normal or not, since this is the first fandom I've done askbox fics for. But like the AUs, it's kind of entertaining to try to take that sort of thing in different ways depending on 'verse. (I suspect it amuses me more considering I 98% headcanon these two never having children - at least these two as framed by the TV series; I know it's otherwise in the books.)_

 _As always, you can find me on Tumblr as myalchod._


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